Re: st: the memory footprint and execution speed of -mf_quadcross()-

[William Buchanan <william@williambuchanan.net>]

Hi Laszlo,

No offense, but I think the reason that you don't elicit many responses isn't a fault of "usefulness of all [your] questions," but rather that you are just making a comment about how much Stata sucks for your applications.  You could probably generate some useful discussion (and quite possibly solve some issues that you're running into) if you framed the issues that you list in terms of questions with examples that other users can replicate and try to help solve.  

With regards to the two questions that you listed here (since the above is also meant to reference several of the other emails you sent after this), no one here could answer your first question.  Are you more interested in precision or speed?  If -mf_quadcross()- doesn't provide you with the speed that you want but gives you the precision that you need, then it wasn't a bad idea; conversely, if it provides a level of precision that you don't need but speed that is desirable then it also wouldn't be a bad idea.  So in an attempt to answer your second question, no one knows how bad because you've not clearly defined what bad or good are.  

HTH,
Billy

On Sep 12, 2013, at 2:52 PM, László Sándor <sandorl@gmail.com> wrote:

> I checked some of Bill's resources on precision (e.g.
> http://blog.stata.com/2012/04/02/the-penultimate-guide-to-precision/),
> and -mf_quadcross()- is always mentioned as an option, possibly
> overkill, but without much guidance on what the costs of its use might
> be in terms of memory or execution speed.
> 
> If my code uses the function many times on humungous st_views, was it
> a bad idea to use quadcross()? Probably it was — but how bad?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Laszlo
> 
> PS: I must wonder about the usefulness of all my questions if they
> attract few comments. Thanks for bearing with me anyway.
> 
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